This invention is in the field of integrated circuits, and is more specifically directed to clock generation circuits.
As is fundamental in the art, many modern electronic systems include numerous integrated circuits that operate in conjunction with one another. For example, consumer-oriented systems such as televisions and home theaters include video decoders for decoding an input video signal into digital video output signals that are synchronized with a synchronization pulse contained within the incoming video signal itself. Modern spread-spectrum communications transmitters and receivers require the generation of high-frequency clock signals for the modulation and demodulation, respectively, of signals over the multiple subchannels of the spread spectrum bandwidth. In these and other electronic systems, the generation of periodic signals for clocking the operation of circuit functions based upon a system clock or synchronization pulse, is a common and often critical function.
A conventional approach for generating periodic signals based upon a reference clock utilizes the well-known phase-locked loop (“PLL”). In general, PLL circuits operate by comparing the time at which an edge of a reference clock is received with a corresponding edge of an internally generated clock. If a significant delay between these two edges is detected, the generation of the internal clock is adjusted to more closely match the received reference clock. In conventional analog PLLs, the frequency of a voltage controlled oscillator is adjusted by a filtered signal from a phase detector that compares system and chip clocks, so that the instantaneous frequency of the internal chip clock is advanced or retarded depending upon whether the chip clock lags or leads the system clock. Analog PLLs adjust the phase of the chip clock in a substantially continuous manner in response to a phase difference between the internal chip clock and the system clock. This smooth operation generally depends upon the filtering of the output of the phase detector circuit, but can be made quite well-behaved in many implementations. Additionally, by inserting frequency dividers in the forward and feedback loops, analog PLLs can be used to generate periodic signals of a selectable frequency multiple of the input reference clock.
Several types of digital PLLs (DPLLs), in which some of the signals communicated around the loop are in digital form, are known in the art. A specific class of DPLL is the so-called “all-digital” PLL (ADPLL), in which all signals in the loop are digital. Known implementations of ADPLLs include divide-by-N counters, increment-decrement (ID) counters, and digital waveform synthesizers. Several conventional ADPLL designs are described in Best, Phase-Locked Loops: Design, Simulation, and Applications (McGraw-Hill, 1997), pp. 177-199.
By way of further background, clock generator circuits based on a phase-locked loop (PLL) are described in Mair and Xiu, “An Architecture of High-Performance Frequency and Phase Synthesis”, J. Solid State Circ., Vo. 35, No. 16 (IEEE, June, 2000), pp. 835-46, and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,329,850 B1, issued Dec. 11, 2001 and commonly assigned herewith, both documents incorporated herein by this reference. In these “flying-adder” clock generation circuits, the voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) of the PLL produces a plurality of evenly-spaced output phases at a frequency that is locked to a reference clock. A register stores a digital value that selects the desired phase to be applied to the clock input of a toggle flip-flop from which the output clock is generated. A frequency synthesis circuit adds integer and fraction portions of an incoming frequency selection value to the current contents of the register. The fraction portion of the frequency selection value permits a time-averaged clock frequency to be produced with more precision than would be attained by the integer portions selecting the multiple VCO output phases. This article and U.S. Patent also describe alternative realizations, including multiple frequency synthesis circuits based upon the same PLL and the generation of a phase-shifted secondary output from a phase synthesis circuit that is slaved to the frequency synthesis circuit. Additional performance is obtained by providing separate paths for producing the leading and trailing edges of the output clock.
By way of further background, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2004/0008805 Al, published Jan. 15, 2004, from copending and commonly assigned application Ser. No. 10/376,453, filed Feb. 26, 2003, and incorporated herein by this reference, describes a phase-locked loop using a flying-adder frequency synthesizer, in which a central processing unit generates a feedback divide integer in the feedback loop from the VCO output (which provides the multiple phases to the flying-adder). Because the CPU generates the feedback ratio, the flying-adder frequency synthesizer can be designed to use only integer values, effectively eliminating jitter while still providing low frequency error.
By way of further background, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2005/0162552 A1, published Jul. 28, 2005, from copending and commonly assigned application Ser. No. 10/829,770, filed Apr. 22, 2004, and incorporated herein by this reference, describes the application of a digital-control oscillator based on a flying-adder frequency synthesizer in generating a clock signal that is at an extremely large frequency multiple relative to the input reference signal. Such clock signals are useful in many systems applications, for example in video decoders. In this implementation, the flying-adder architecture provides such high frequency-multiple clock signals to be generated, while also providing the ability to finely and precisely tune the phase of the clock signals.
By way of further background, U.S. Pat. No. 6,940,937 B2, issued Sep. 6, 2005, commonly assigned herewith and incorporated herein by this reference, describes another flying-adder clock generation circuit, based on the flying-adder architecture of the Mair and Xiu article and U.S. Pat. No. 6,329,850 B1. In particular, this copending application describes a clock generation circuit in which two or more frequency synthesis paths terminate at the inputs of a multiplexer, the output of which toggles a toggle mode bistable multivibrator (T flip-flop). Sequential selection of the synthesis paths is controlled in a synchronized manner with the output of the circuit, so that the synthesis path outputs sequentially toggle the flip-flop. In this way, the number of synthesis paths can be increased arbitrarily, with the scaling limited by the performance of control circuits for the output multiplexer. The propagation delay paths of each synthesis path can then extend to the multiple periods of the output clock, making higher output frequency possible. In addition, the toggle signal operates as a double-frequency clock signal.
These flying-adder frequency and phase synthesis circuits have been observed to provide excellent performance, with the later advances described above resulting in scalability of the architecture, as well as improved performance and reliability. However, it has been observed, in connection with this invention, that the most significant source of noise in these circuits is design and layout mismatch among the multiple VCO stages. This noise directly causes frequency error in the output clock signal. Based on this observation, it has been discovered, in connection with this invention, that it is desirable to reduce the number of VCO stages in order to reduce the severity of this mismatch, and thus the frequency error; in addition, this reduction in the number of VCO stages would also beneficially reduce power consumption of the circuit. However, simply reducing the number of VCO stages would correspondingly reduce the number of available phases applied to the flying-adder synthesizer, and thus reduce the resolution at which the frequency of the output clock signal may be selected. As such, the ability to improve the accuracy of the flying-adder frequency synthesis architecture in this way has not yet been available.